The team they say, since we are doing the break in oil changes anyway, why not do some analysis for the thread to see what we can learn. The riding weather has to be bad to do this stuff right! After draining the shipping oil, we installed the Rotella T-4 with a magnetic oil drain plug to collect any ferrous metal residue that being steel or iron. At each oil change we let the oil drain overnight into a collection tub before we slowly poured off the top to evaluate the residue. Sitting overnight may allow the heavier particles to sink down through that viscosity to the bottom of the tub. Mouse click click on the pictures twice to zoom in and see detail.
Ride time 10-minutes then oil change, mileage 1 mile
Ride time 1 hour then oil change, mileage 16 miles
Ride time 3 3/4-hour then oil change, mileage 93 miles
Picture of couple of nonmagnetic pieces fished out of the bottom of the oil tub and a magnet swirled through that oil with a couple of iron shards.
Picture of the oil before pour off the next day after the drain and we see particles in suspension that have a shimmering quality. This is typical of what the team has seen with all CG motors at oil change. It is not magnetic and the consensus is it be clutch friction disc material but whatever it is, it surely churns throughout the motor.
Discussion: Metal parts are wearing in creating ferrous metal residue. The small dark pieces in the oil appear to be pieces of gasket material. The small silver reflective pieces appear to be small pieces of aluminum. What we don’t know is the level of contaminants smaller than can be seen with the eye down to some microscopic level (Microns) and what may be their composition metal, fiber, etc. Interesting the make up of the iron material on the magnet is mostly big pieces, long shards, of different shapes. The team has used magnetic drain plugs before and usually you will see a good amount of smudge of metal paste of very small particles almost a liquid attached to the magnet, but this in motors that have some mileage on them and between oil changes. You do not see that here, yet, and that could be just the low mileage between oil changes. The drain plug magnet did not get all the loose ferrous metal as we found a few shards in the bottom of the drain tub but no paste.
The team thought going on to a 500 mile change would be good but the curiosity is up so I think will see at 250